Once again, from the top...

     I was looking at my wife's chronological one-year Bible this morning, the one that lets you read through the Bible in the order it was written, and decided to start at the beginning. I didn't get very far, and here's why:
     Genesis 1:1 starts with "In the beginning,...." Actually, the first word I contemplated was "beginning." Time had a beginning. God is eternal; therefore, he had to create time and that point of creation was the beginning. God views time from His perspective of eternity; thus, he is able to view all aspects of time, past, present, and future, simultaneously. Luther's translation specifically uses "Am Anfang"; if he just meant "first", he would have used "Zuerst," so it seems Luther also recognized this as the beginning of time.
    Next, I focused on the preposition "In." Time began, and in that beginning of time, God created the heavens (note the plural) and the earth. Strong's indicates the Hebrew for "heavens" is shamayim shameh. The first form is plural, "the second form being dual of an unused singular". I have very little knowledge of Hebrew, but I do know that nouns ending in "-im" are plural. Strong's says the dual may allude "to the visible arch in which the clouds move, as well as to the higher ether where the celestial bodies revolve."
     The Believer's Bible Commentary (BBC) says of the first four words of the Bible ("In the beginning God...") that they "form the foundation for faith. Believe these words, and you can believe all that follows in the Bible." How true!